Death Knight: [Obscure and Irrelevant]Q & A[That We Already Knew]

25062009

Welcome, welcome! As you may have been aware of, Blizzard has been releasing class Q&As, and most recently the Death Knight version appeared. If you haven’t seen the thread yet, take a look, then come back and read why I think it was a big waste of time/anticlimax. I’m going to go question by question, starting with #1. (I’ll re-post the question and summarize the answer.)

Note: Square brackets are my snarky comments.

Q: Where do death knights fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward?

Okay, so question #1 is broad and essentially reiterates what we’ve already gleaned from the patch notes, which is a reoccurring theme in this Q&A. Let’s move on and hope there are more meaty questions farther in.

GC’s answer to this question basically told us what we already knew about the class from release. Things are not looking good.

Q: How do we feel about the current viability of dual-wielding? Are there plans to improve it or have it fit a specific role for the class?

A: Repeat of things already in the 3.2 patch notes. Blah blah Frost is the new DW. We don’t really care about 2h Frost anymore (nerfing it is not a “goal” but neither is keeping it alive a priority). Blood and Unholy DW specs apparently stopped working all of a sudden [there have been reports of its success in Ulduar from the EJ forum] because Frost got a DW talent.

So GC doesn’t care about 2h Frost. What was that about no significant changes in patch notes anymore? Not having to completely rethink the way I play every patch? Hm.

Q: Do we have plans for any changes or improvements to Dancing Rune Weapon?

A: Read the patch notes, guys. [Maybe they should have released this before the patch notes, and then I would have cared.]

Nothing to say about this. It’s a question we already knew the answer to.

Q: What are our current thoughts on the status of death knight tanks and do we have plans for further changes?

A: DK tanks are overpowered [I thought warriors were tanking everything, GC?] and are really the only good choice for tanking hard modes. Nerfs incoming that we also already knew about.

Q: Are we satisfied with stats such as Armor Penetration, Haste, and Hit having very different values depending on which talent spec a death knight is using?

A: No different tier sets for different specs. Making ArPen work for more than just Blood.

In what possible way could this be accomplished? Armor mitigates physical damage, and ArPen removes some of this mitigation, thereby increasing physical damage dealt. This is great for Blood, which does lots of physical damage, but for Frost and Unholy, where 50-60% of total damage is allocated to either Frost or Shadow damage, this stat is basically a joke. Unless they plan to somehow make it affect magic damage for Frost Strike and Scourge Strike (which are melee abilities) or make them physical damage abilities (boring), I’m at a loss. This needs to be addressed because of how prevalent ArPen as a stat is and how undesirable it makes many pieces of gear (read: all Ulduar plate DPS bracers except the one from Mimiron-25 hard mode).

Q: Would it be possible to save runeforge enchants to primary and secondary talent specializations or add rune forges to more convenience places than Acherus?

A: Runeforges are already good, no changes incoming.

Who cares? Most people have two weapons, and even if you don’t you’ll only need to change specs to go into an instance (most of the time) at which point other members of your group can just summon you back from Acherus. This leads to another problem with the Q&A: issues that are so unimportant I’ve never heard anyone QQ about them seriously.

Q: Are there plans to change or improve the Frigid Deadplate talent?

A: No plans.

WTF? Who was complaining about Frigid Dreadplate? No Frost tank ever avoids this talent or complains that it’s worse than Anticipation (dodge > miss), which was apparently a concern for GC.

Q: Is there any plan to improve Will of the Necropolis?

A: No plans.

See above.

Q: Is this a bug or something in particular we are investigating? (Referring to how sometimes the combat log records Mind Freeze as having interrupted a spell and yet the spell goes off regardless.)

A: Server-client disagreement, server wins.

I think we knew this about WoW already. Sometimes you lag behind the server.

Q: Do we have plans to change any of the death knight’s self-healing abilities?

A: No plans.

Apparently people think we can survive too long without a healer. Lots of classes can survive without a healer, we just do it differently. Rogues Vanish, Mages Blink, Paladins Bubble, Warlocks have an escape mechanism… etc. Since DKs don’t really have an effective way of running away, we get the ability to heal ourselves. Seems fair, right?

Q: Would you consider adding a Mortal Strike-like ability to death knights in the future?

A: Probably not, no.

I wasn’t ever expecting a Mortal Strike effect, and I doubt any other DK was either.

Q: Will Chains of Ice ever be subject to diminishing returns?

A: No[t yet].

It’s a snare that we can cast twice every 10 seconds, or four times every 10 with Death Runes. If we do that, our damage is completely gimped since we’d only be left with the runes to cast Plague Strike.

Q: Will ghouls ever get their voices back?

A: Long-term plan to bring them back.

I don’t care. I’ve got other issues! The overriding problems with this Q&A:

Questions often already answered by 3.2 patch notes

Questions and answers were uninteresting/uninformative

Questions didn’t address any of the important issues in any detail (ArPen, itemization, tanking, 2h Frost…)

I’m left wondering what the point of the Q&A series really is. My initial reaction upon reading the DK version was that it could act as sort of a primer to new DKs, but that went out the window with the whole “ghoul voice” thing among other questions clearly not directed at new Death Knights. Calling it a class Q&A raises the expectation that it will answer important and useful questions about the class, rather than simply provide a bunch of repetitive crap and some stuff no dedicated DK really cares about. Better luck next time.

“Link this crock”? He was unsatisfied with the Q&A as most of us were, and decided to comment on it. Kid, if you DO like the Q&A, no need to come off as a Blizzard cocksucker.

Either way, Death Knights always have been a marketing tool, and this is shown multiple times in the Q&A. Ghostcrawler himself says that since the advent of dual-spec, the need for high-level tanks has lessened. We’ve been relegated even more now to Blizzard’s advertisements and nothing more.

I understand your issues with this Q&A, but the first one on shammies was wildly interesting and informative. I don’t think there’s something wrong with the Q&A series per se, only this installment. We’ll see. Cheers /A.

“Apparently people think we can survive too long without a healer. Lots of classes can survive without a healer, we just do it differently. Rogues Vanish, Mages Blink, Paladins Bubble, Warlocks have an escape mechanism… etc. Since DKs don’t really have an effective way of running away, we get the ability to heal ourselves. Seems fair, right?”

While I didn’t think the Q&A was all that great, I didn’t think it was as bad as you made it out to be. How about adding a little value to your post by listing the questions you would have liked to see answered instead?

I agree with Coma that this is a personal blog and needs to be taken as such.

With that being said, I play a Blood DPS DK and am loving all of the Armor Pen on everything, but with my secondary tree being 0/10/61, all that ArP is meaningless for that spec. My opinion on the matter is that they will eventually homogenize Armor Pen and Spell Pen, making it just Penetration so that it meets the needs of Plate-wearing “casters” (for want of a different word). Read that as Unholy/Frost DKs and Pallies. That is just my opinion, I don’t really play any caster classes, so I am not too familiar with Spell Penetration mechanics so take my opinion with a grain of salt. But that would be inline with the homogenization they did with +spell power/+healing a while back.

Questions I would have liked answered (other than the obvious ArP question):

Why were auras nerfed? I didn’t see any reason to nerf them, and with some classes providing comparable buffs to our auras, didn’t see a need for the nerfage. (I posted the same question on the WoW forums and some dude got nerdrage and never explained, but I would like your opinion about it so I can understand better.)

If anything, I felt that the Frost Aura needed buffing so that it was stackable like GotW and Pally Auras were.

I think that once again PvP reared it’s ugly head and us Raiders are paying the price for it. My opinion is that the nerfage, like a lot of the nerfs, are PvP related.

Also, I hope the T9 DPS 4 piece bonus is a place holder, because it sucks in my opinion. I don’t see it being the DPS increase like the T8 4 pc was. If they don’t change it, I don’t foresee breaking my T8 4 pc bonus anytime soon.

Spell Penetration (as it stands now) is a useless stat in PvE. What it does is reduce the resistances of all magic schools of the target, but bosses in raids don’t actually have any magic resistance (except Sapphiron, who has buttloads of Frost resist, for some reason), so homogenizing these two stats wouldn’t really help us out.

About auras – well, Blood Aura was okay, if a little bit weak, and Frost Aura was largely pointless. The thing was that Unholy Aura was the only way to give a raid 15% movement speed, which meant that all raids had to have an Unholy DK, which is something Blizzard doesn’t want happening. I understand this nerf, though the new improved presence talents are somewhat lackluster, especially Blood.

I think the nerfs have a lot to do with PvP, but I can only guess at that.

On the t9 DPS 4-piece, it’s actually a lot better than the t8 one, which to be honest was just terrible. I play Frost, so it only buffed Obliterate, which usually ran around 5-8% of my DPS for a typical boss encounter. This left it at about less than 1% DPS increase for me. It was slightly better for Unholy and Blood, but not stellar by any means. Since they’re buffing disease damage by 15%, I think this new tier bonus will be a bit better, but 3.2 is still a long way away so we’ll have to see.